Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?

World War I is again attracting a great deal of academic and journalistic interest. Fromkin treats it as a murder mystery, with great success. After a crisp, lively, day-by-day account of that fateful summer, he concludes that what struck Europe in June 1914 was anything but "jagged lightning flashing suddenly across a summer sky"; it was, rather, a powder keg ready to explode long before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28. (After all, Germany's military leaders had begun to advocate preventive war against Russia and France as early as 1905, and Vienna had begun to draft an ultimatum against Serbia two weeks before the assassination.) The blame for this explosion Fromkin pins squarely on Germany and Austria, or at least on the "small governing cliques" that were responsible for the war. Fromkin sees the war as a struggle for mastery in Europe, not for empire. And his bleak conclusion is that, since it takes only one to start a war, it could happen again. This book, both decisive and nuanced, is as convincing as its story is appalling.

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This article is adapted from the author's remarks at the tenth annual dinner of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, at which he was honored for distinguished scholarship in German history and for contributions to good relations between the United States and Germany. Reflections on his career ...

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